First for the legal fireworks:
I think the biggest problem in Holland is that most people go to the shop buy some good looking items and throw them in their car. Then when it's 1-1 00:01 they come out of their houses to light their new years eve fireworks and they don't know anything about what their stuff is going to do, they didn't read the manuals and they don't secure their fireworks enough against tipover. Furthermore I've personally not seen anyone wearing safety glasses.
As a last problem most people have had quite much alcohol and then it is extra dangerous because they are paying less attention.
If accidents happen most of them are either caused by intended misuse, ignorance (people not knowing what that item is going to do) or people not caring about safety distances. Furthermore in the cities and towns your neighbours can be dangerous too because they might screw because of one of the above reasons and you might be in danger.
Now please don't draw to conclusion thatthat new years eve is a highly mortal event here, most people have no problems at all or they are having close calls. This is due to the quite good quality and stability of most items. Most accidents happen because of intended misuse or people accidentily placing repeaters upside down.
About illegal fireworks:
The illegal fireworks are in my opinion more dangerous to the population then the legal because of mostly the same reasons. People not knowing what things are or do, or not caring about safety distances. Every year there are new people posting here with questions which seem to be lunatic, firing professional shells from very small distances, they don't know what quickmatch is also most of the times. Their trader didn't tell them and if they then fire the shell and they just lite the quickmatch accidents are just an inch away....
However FPM is working as hard as possible on these boards to inform people about how to use items they bought anyway in order to make it more safe.
Then some numbers I looked up
source:
These are numbers which come from summing up all accidents throughout the netherlands.
- new years eve 2004/2005: 620 people had to go to the hospital for threatment.
- people aged between 10 and 20 years experience 44% of all firework accidents
- 1 person died this year
The last but not least problem (no)
People are not really cleaning up after their fired their fireworks (shame on them!!!). Children going out 1st of januari during the day to burn all fireworksremains. This means all misfires are also burned and sadly every year some children get hirt because of exploding fires. The government is using TV advertisements against this and most other problems mentioned earlier.